Nyctophobia
by CaideSin
Summary: And the air was alive with piercing sound and burning skies. The horror did me good. The magic was on my side and hot and cold ideas were running onto your eyes, your sinking grey eyes. [AU, KHxNBC][Axel plus Roxas]
1. He

**Part One**

It's very dark. Heavy earth shifts beneath his claws. It's darker than night. The pale, sickly face of the sun is several thousand miles above, unable to penetrate the many layers to reach this subworld. There are things down here, terrifying, with claws, pincers…and the eyes.

Some scuttle along, spinning undetectable, impenetrable, inescapable webs of ephemeral silk. Others slowly scrape their way through the hardened layers. Creating new passageways and pitfalls with which to trap their unlucky prey.

A wayward spirit goes tumbling through the layers of substance. Spinning and screaming in confusion till at last it points itself back toward the surface.

Wormlings greet him with glee as he slithers adroitly through the twisting narrow caverns.

Their shrilling voices ring out in his ears like thousands of rusty nails dragged haphazardly across ancient chalkboards. His viciously pointed ears catch the sound. He enjoys it, as if it were beautiful demented music. He grins ear-to-ear with a smile full of knife-sharp teeth, so white they are nearly iridescent in the shadows. He pauses in his trek, body laid flat in the thin tube of earth, slim, sleek and serpentine. Delicate bone-thin fingers, with long nails, reach out, tickling his warped little leech-cousins from the holes in the walls, like pox. The larval worms come willingly, climbing along his chilled skin. The spikes protruding from their sandpaper skin prick his long-dead flesh. One of them bites playfully at the pad of a fingertip with rings of tiny anterior teeth.

They all quiver with dreadful delight as a heart exploding thump rattles the burrow, shaking loose clouds of dirt and bits of bones, long forgotten gobbets in the dark.

The wormlings' hermaphroditic mother sends her greeting in a series of thrashes of her deadly spiked tail. She's somewhere in another secret cavern miles away. Her monstrous size, which could bring down a continent, makes the eardrum-shattering message simple to deliver. The mere sight of her could destroy the human mind…

The wormlings echo the sentiment with their strident calls, full of childish enthusiasm and fiendish love. They roam the frigid mountains of his hands and knuckles. Pretending they are on a deadly adventure. Searching for the Lich King's frozen throne.

His smile widens. His exquisitely chiseled jaws crunch as they dislocate to accommodate the berth of his grin. His eyes give a slight shimmer of acid green, as all the demonic pleasure comes purring up from the depths of his being. Like a dark deva summoned straight from the fiery depths of Hell. The dusky rawboned scratches along his gaunt cheekbones appear like freshly inflicted lesions on his cadaverous features. The scar-strings, which extend up to his tear ducts, are proof of his abominable birth. He strokes a wormling along its many slimy segments with one filth-encrusted talon. It gives a shivering shriek as he skewers its small blood sucking body and then pops it, wriggling, into his mouth.

As it is impaled upon his many rows of gnashing teeth, he tastes a pleasant coppery burst of its gorged center. The myriad of snakes, coral, rattle, viper, and asp, in his hair burst to life with a violent flame, the taste of blood always exciting them. Their glee a series of sibilant hisses, an ominous rattle, akin to a frail old human's crepitation rales.

The underground channel shakes again. The strobing of light from his ignited hair and the tremble of the distended cavern make for a surreal atmosphere, positively suffocating. He shoos the children back to their grimy beds and shifts in the tunnel. Propping up an elbow to support his chin on his hand. While he toys a writhing tendril of flame around his nail, one hand drums on the soil carpet, a frenzied tattoo all his own. He listens with ears mauled and ragged. This injury has never stopped him from mutilating the flesh further with a series of hand done piercings, which jingle like some cruel mockery of Christmas bells.

His hearing so acute and tuned to the final dreadful resonations of the worm's dicacious inquiries, that he feels a trickle of liquid come oozing from within his ears. The flow turns into a rivulet of black, tracing a graceful line from earlobe to pallid cheek, then down the jagged point of his recherché chin. Plummeting to the grungy floor with a muted scream as the organisms inside that solitary drop are jolted and destroyed. The subterranean parasites hurriedly begin consuming.

"The family business is doing well," he rasps in reply to the great worm Mother, the lacerations of his lean neck tegument flaring. These wide rips expose spoiling meat beneath. In one deep area of the mangled wound even his cervical vertebrae glisten. He bears many such gruesome exposures of the rotted under-layer of muscle and sinew, littering his body like garbage, usually hidden behind a coating of watery cutis. For he is something sewn together with stark, piceous, fat threads.

"I will be certain to tell my most heinous mother that you send your ill-wishes," he offers by way of dismissal.

One final cacophonous death toll rings and the worm moves on. So does he, slithering through the winding tunnel ways.

The crisp scent of nothingness as a wraith passes by, the putrid stench of a decaying body somewhere in the labyrinthine caverns, the warm earthy smell of the burrow. All work him into a blind passion of zeal and he hurries, clawing brutally at the soil.

As he approaches his destination, the three-eyed mole-men greet him with their arachnid chittering, a click-clack of teeth. As they hurry out of his way, a new door is mentioned. The fire in his blood flares. The snakes in his hair twist in anticipation, snapping their poisonous jaws at the moles as they pass, in a flurry of talons and fangs and fire.

The door is made of old wood, filled now with life, trapped and dying within the moldered planks, a cage of stone and mortar. The brass handle and hinges have long since rusted to a rancid malachite. It screams outrageously as he rips it open. He slips through the swirling portal of oily black into the world beyond. The dust on the floorboards part for him like an old friend. The shadows of the room simper and lick at his heels, faithful till the end.

The serpents in his locks have coiled down into a smoldering fire, ready to strike. His reptilian eyes flicker briefly with Unholy light, then douse suddenly, brutally, as if they were nothing more than oil lamps of pure absinthian colored bile.

He slinks bonelessly on his belly toward the pathetic beams of phantasmal moonlight that have managed to paw their way through ancient Venetian blinds. Long fingernails brush something, an obstacle. Smoothly he slides around it like fluid darkness itself.

Somewhere, far away, there is the bark of some canine creature.

One of the serpents wreathing his head lets out an agitated sigh of breath. The others lunge at it in silent fury, the air shifting imperceptibly around them.

He slips under a soft curtain, like a death shroud, and finds his way into a patch of light, wincing away as if burned. With eyes aglow and halo of vipers aquiver, he peeks over the edge of the bed, for the first of many such nocturnal sojourns.

A little boy lies there. On the pillow, feathery soft baby hair of silver gold sticks up around his head at all angles. Messy from the tossing and turning of an uneasy sleep.

He slithers closer. Holding fetid breath lest he wake the child. Once close enough, his long forked tongue darts out, dragging its coarse surface along the victim's cheek.

The boy stirs. Tiny pink lips let out a tired, groggy murmur. Sleepy, bright eyes open slowly, catching what little moonlight filters in. Within moments of seeing him, the little one's pupils blow to nothing more than tiny dots of dark fear within a sea of uncompromising ultramarine.

He holds his breath a moment more before letting it out in a sharp snarling scream of delight. A sudden warmth encircles them both, and the snakes begin to quaver violently, their insistent buzzing filling the entire room to bursting. He leans in, tongue still hanging unfurled, each fork twitching of its own accord. He writhes closer, desperate to taste sweet flesh again. Without warning, one fang sinks smoothly into the boy's neck, below the collarbone. A shudder runs through the boy's body.

Delightful, he purrs to himself, as a delicious whimper pushes up from the child's stricken throat. The puncture wells with fantastic, living, human blood and it takes a tremendous act of will to pull himself away from the juicy morsel. He laughs, dark and gravely in the back of his destroyed throat. Then he lets out another bloodcurdling scream.

The child grabs his star dotted blanket and tugs it up fearfully over his head, sobbing pathetically.

For a long time after, the kid hears the hissing and rattling of the snakes. He still feels the sting and warm dribble of blood from his slender neck.

After a while it seems his own sobbing finally drowns out the horrible sounds and he peeks from beneath his covers, still frightened. He sees nothing, only the darkened room he knows so well. Gathering his courage he leaps from the safety of the bed, running on tiny legs to his parents' bedroom, where, exhausted, he cries until falling back asleep.

* * *

**Standard Disclaimers**

* * *


	2. shook

**Part Two**

The bus is full of static and the sound of rain on the windows and the smell of ozone. There are only six children onboard, two of which have fallen asleep in a futile attempt to ward off the long ride and all its inherit boredom.

In total, to and from the high school, nearly three hours are brutally raped away from their day.

The sky had opened up early that morning, pissing down on the students awaiting the screaming demon that their pig of a principal refers to, oh so affectionately, as the cheese wagon. It had rained all day and now—as he watches the rugged cornfields go by and feels his spine jolted painfully as the long-worn shocks completely fail in their duty when the great sea-yacht's giant tires hit yet another pothole on this distended road—the air thunders loudly, making a junior high girl scream, and a great herd of lightning birds come flying down from the sky, striking far off, maybe igniting a cornfield or two.

The cage-like atmosphere of the interior is not cool, as this rickety old vessel has not had functioning air-conditioning since 1978. Instead, it is muggy and uncomfortable, and each child feels as if their skin has been grafted with frogs. Damp, clammy, and full of wriggling excitement from the charge in the air and the incessant, maddening slamming of rain upon the dingy windows.

Even this onslaught of water will not wash away nearly a centuries worth of hard earned country grime from these windows.

Exposed skin sticks to the pleather seats, making any movement much akin to peeling duct tape from every part of your body. So they all settle into nearly comatose states, holding still and for the most part being quiet because the insistent wet does not hide the manure smell of the farms they drive past and the smell is happy to enter in with your breath. One girl's mouth continues to run, but her brain is not engaged in the process.

Roxas stares out the window. Not that it affords him much of a view, the rain is too heavy and he's seen every last inch of this route a million times before. Every day, to and fro, he's seen both sides of the road and he dearly, dearly wishes he hadn't. His mind is slowly melting, dripping out his ears and dribbling away just like the frantic rain drops battering themselves like crazed birds over and over again against the glass.

Roxas is a strange one though; classmates and teachers alike speculate that he does drugs. They can't think of much other explanation for the dark rings around his eyes, his pale complexion, his messy outward appearance, his obsession with demons, his habit of skipping class, and his low grades. They aren't off the mark, his parents and siblings suspect much the same but they have never managed to catch him at it, so for the time being, he's just a strange boy.

Normally his younger brother would be on the bus with him, to make sure he really did go home, not that he has somewhere else to be or friends to run off with. When he skips class he doesn't go far, only making it about as far as the Pizza King where he sits and plays pinball for hours at a time. His younger brother isn't like that, he has friends and it's Friday afternoon. Sora has ridden home with Riku. Roxas hasn't noticed yet, he might by the time the bus shrieks to a halt at the corner several blocks away from his house. He might have trudged halfway home before noticing…

There's no point in beating around the bush, he won't notice.

His house is in a snug little suburban community that's situated much too far away from the only high school for several counties. The place is full of middle-class White families with a smattering of Indians and Mexicans and Blacks and Orthodox Jews. Sampling platter, or something equally politically incorrect that Roxas doesn't really pay attention to. The bus releases him from its bowels and it's raining still and he's getting soaked as he clambers clumsily up a grassy hill.

The brown house itself is situated at the top of a long sloping drive. From the front it looks to be very small with only one story, but, in fact, the majority of the house is built downwards, hidden away from view by the very earth it stands on.

In the front room there is a large window, they've always meant to put up curtains, but instead the glass is usually unguarded, reflecting the calm blue lake, which stirs fitfully like a waking cat on the other side of the road at the base of the knoll.

Roxas sees Naminé sitting in the window seat and he almost smiles, but a yawn overtakes him and he sputters as a flood of rainwater batters the back of his throat.

Naminé is just barely six years old and she is the only person in his family that he feels at all close to. She is a tiny introverted girl with lily-white skin and pearlescent hair; her eyes are like beacons of light, even with the gray sky and the miserable rain. They pull in every drop of brightness that they can, stealing it away for the purpose of their own azure radiance.

She has always looked a lot like him and the similarity is a comfort to them both. In their younger days, before they truly bonded with one another, they felt outcast from their family. He too has white-blond hair, pasty skin and icy blue eyes, but the rest of their kin are full of warm colors. Nut and auburn hair, intense iris' reminiscent of the Blue Jay's plume, and skin that turns an affectionate shade of brown from even the slightest of sun kisses.

Naminé has been looking like him more and more lately. Her nights have been haunted and her tiny eyes are smudged from the lack of sleep.

When he pulls open the front door—the outer one squeals on its metal hinges and the inner wooden one sticks obstinately in its swollen jamb—the little girl flies to him, mindful of neither his weighted satchel nor his soggy state. He bends at the knee to embrace her, pushing aside her silky forelock to kiss her forehead. Either he's desperately cold or she's dangerously hot.

They have recently abandoned all forms of verbal communication. Her fledgling vocabulary makes it far too much effort. He leaves his bag in the doorway and hefts her into his arms. He passes by the kitchen on his way to the bedrooms and sees several bright, glaring, sticky notes.

One is from his sister, Kairi, saying she's gone up the street to visit with her friend, Selphie. Kairi, like all the others, is lively and talkative, with vibrant hair and wide, bright eyes. She's usually very good about caring for Naminé. Roxas thinks his parents must have been here when she left, and then they, in their usual neglectful ways, were the ones to leave his baby sister all alone.

They've never been able to properly care for them.

They're wary of their oldest child and their youngest. They find themselves unable to comprehend their wraith like children. Both of them have been sent to therapists by their desperate parents, but the sessions came to no avail. Roxas feels no sympathy at all for their plight. He remembers very well the way they had talked when Naminé had first come home, a tiny premature bundle of pallid skin and bones. Already they'd feared she would be like him…

Naminé moans as he tries to set her in her bed, she clings to him fearfully. He understands all too well and falls in behind her, cradling her to his chest.

Her room is very plain, no posters or stickers or dolls such as other little girls like to play with. She prefers to draw with her crayons, lovingly taping up each picture as it is born. Now all her papers lay scattered on the floor, scribbled out with a frenzied hand.

Roxas understands, and every night since her dreams began he has checked her body for any sign of injury.

His parents don't understand.

They think they're just dreams, fear of the unknown, all children have them. Roxas knows better, Roxas knows better because of the look in her eyes, he knows better because sometimes he hears the rattling through the wall. He is usually frozen in his bed at those times; unable to move what for his fear, though he desperately wants to save her.

His visits from the monster have long since ceased. Four long years the beast came, with his long forked tongue and snaking hair. Not every night, but often enough to be sure terror was firmly instilled in the child's heart.

And now it is Naminé's turn.

"Sleep," he croaks. His throat is dry from the pot he'd smoked before getting on the bus. The visions have been dancing in front of his eyes since then, embedding themselves into the rain and the lightning and the air. They are joyful spirits, which he uses shamelessly to try and forget the zombie-like creature with the glowing green eyes and hellfire hair. "It never comes during the day."

Naminé gives a broken little sob and burrows in against his chest. She closes her eyes, but she shakes like a newborn calf.

She hasn't drawn anything in months—or, nothing other than violent red and green and black scribbles—not since it began to come, slithering up from beneath her bed. Flicking its mile-long tongue at her, dragging its sharp pointed nails across her flower-petal skin. She cries and screams and wonders why no one ever comes…she wonders why Roxas never comes.

"Sleep," he says again. His voice sounds very much like the monsters, dry and ruined.

She hates the way she can sometimes can the way see rotting muscles are working in the nightmare's throat. She hates to see the frayed edges of the thread that holds it together. She's seen the scar on Roxas' collarbone and wonders when the monster from under the bed will bite her.

"Its afraid of the light just as much as we are of the dark…" Roxas soothes.

It helps to hear that he's afraid. It helps to see the dark rings under his eyes and to see the futile shaking in his tired hands whenever he tries to convince her to color again. The garbage scent of weed all over his body has become his defining scent. These things are hers to understand, even if she's too young and can't put words into it. She knows why he doesn't sleep and he doesn't hide the smell of drugs from her. Only her. It's a bond of terror that goes deeper than their own blood.

When the door to Naminé's room is suddenly thrown open with a bang, their bodies spasm together in mutual panic. Kairi stands there, wet and breathing heavily, leaning against the doorframe for support. She looses a long audible sigh of relief to see them both there.

Kairi has a good heart.

Roxas knows she would never have left Naminé all alone intentionally.

"They…" she swallows thickly. "They called to tell me they wouldn't be home until late. I…I didn't think you…" Her eyes display the concern she feels for them and their wracked bodies, but she doesn't understand. Roxas cringes away from her uncomprehending sympathy and Naminé holds tighter to the front of his frayed black sweater, responding only to the tension in his body. "She wasn't alone long?"

Roxas shakes his head mutely, unwilling to aggravate his throat for the likes of her. He shoots her a tired glare as she comes closer, dripping all over Naminé's ruined pictures. She reaches out to brush Naminé's tangled hair, but draws her fingers back at the signs of fever. Her mouth opens, but Roxas cuts her off, whispering out a few choice words,

"I will take care of her."

* * *

**Standard Disclaimers  
**


	3. his

**Part Three**

His sleek centaur-leather boots ring out like a funeral procession on the crooked cobblestone road. The aged street shifts and cracks under the fleet-footed force of his passage. The dingy, shattered, windows of the tilting houses watch him, splintered doors gnashing their teeth as he passes by. He hears the earsplitting screams of the local children at play in the nearby Town Square.

There the frothing acid fountain with its ghoulish guardian, the blood soaked guillotine, Doctor Finkelstein's tower, Jack Skellington's disproportionate rickety-stick house and the mayor's office stand. Each of these important buildings garlanded with strings of pumpkins and heads and bones and bats.

It is a wretchedly unpleasant day. The sky is overcast with thundersome clouds, turning the world over to the shadows, filtering away the wan sunlight and forcing each and every stone into a deeper shade of malnourished gray.

The wind howls through the winding alleyways, loud and dangerous, biting like an animal. Its claws slicing right through his ragged striped leggings, chilling straight to the bone in several places where he's lost the flesh. His rows of jagged teeth chatter with pleasure for a moment as the frigid gust caresses his body.

He hums a somber tune as he walks, casually adjusting his clothing, pulling at the sleeves of his stained and heavily patched sweater, fixing the collar of his pinstriped vest. He reaches down to toy with the turtle that serves as his belt buckle, one end of a dead eel tied to its tail, the head clamped down in its mouth. It's very effective in holding up the bottom half of the three-piece pinstripe suit, the pants of which are ripped at the knees. He only wears the jacket for very special occasions, beheadings and the like.

He draws his watch out from his pocket; it's a well-crafted little thing, the face set into the stomach of an unfortunate hamster's corpse. Adorable really, the way the paws come down to hold it in place, soft tufts of mottled orange and white fur still clinging to the bones. It's nearly noon and, if he doesn't hurry, he'll have to wait in line all day at the butchers.

As his pace increases to a fearful run, he passes by some banshee girls. He flashes them a shark's grin and they let out giggling shrieks that make his ears burn. He would like to slow but instead just preens, caressing one of the black asps coiled around his head as he goes by. Once he's rounded the corner he can still hear the haunting invitations they call and feel their eyes on him, lusting after the rotting flesh that they lack.

Thunder crashes in the sky and lightning follows, but it has not yet started to rain. The clouds are dark and heavy in the sky, swirling together, perhaps contemplating a tornado out beyond the Hinterlands. The witches always have a ball taking their ancient broomsticks up into the squalls.

His path takes him careening past a section of the Second District graveyard. He pauses to see if there are any activities taking place today, leaning over the ill-wrought iron fence with its gothic curls and spikes. He sees Lock, Shock, and Barrel tormenting a litter of black dragon whelps. He laughs low in his throat and meanders along, pausing at the decorative gate for a moment to watch the fat one in the skeleton costume writhing in well deserved flames.

The children do not notice him, and he leaves them to learn their lesson about 'leave sleeping dragon whelps lie, or else kill them'. He continues on, jumping over a low stone partition in order to reach a tight alley he knows to occasionally be a shortcut, when the way feels like it. There's a crunch beneath his feet and he glances over his shoulder as he continues to jog. An angry six-headed preying mantis, about the size of a kitten, shakes a long leg at him, menacingly, as it helps its companion up to recover from being squashed.

The sky thunders once more and then begins to throw down stinging droplets of acid rain. Halloween Town citizens hurriedly open up batwing umbrellas or pull on raincoats fashioned from watertight manta-ray skin and goulashes made of various pieces of ducks, before they go out. The fury of this tempest alludes to a shorter duration.

Luckily he is very close to the butcher's. He dodges inside the door, shaking the water off like a dog, just inside the doorway. The Plum's Butchery is a tiny little place with blood-soaked tile floors, which once, long ago, had been a vomit color. The walls are skewed and covered in peeling beige wallpaper of some mandala-like design.

His need to be here before was prompted by the fact that the Swamp Things come for lunch after they finish their rounds of terrorizing fishermen in the early morning. He is not at all in the mood to listen to Jacopo brag about how many of them he'd eaten. Not to mention the smell of live fish is positively overwhelming and definitely vile.

"'ello, Axel," Mrs. Plum calls to him in her heavy voice. Somewhere in the back is Mr. Plum. Axel can hear the steady methodical _thunk_ as he cuts the meat, can hear the wild wailing of the beasts to the slaughter.

Axel turns on his widest grin for her, popping his jaw audibly to fit it. "Awful weather we're having, innit, Missus Plum?" He flutters his eyelashes at her, the effect being something like the dying spasms of a spider's many legs. The butcher's old wife is absolutely charmed. Had she the capacity, her lifeless blue cheeks would have turned red from flattered embarrassment. As it were, her wrinkled old mouth just cracks into a smile, with great effort, and the threads, which had once held it sewn shut hang into the gaping black maw. Her sunken and jaundice eyes widen, and would have glistened if they hadn't dried out many, many years ago.

"Yes, just dreadful. What can we do you for, deary?" she simpers, tugging at her bloodstained apron as if to make herself look more presentable. Then she messes with her barbed wire hair, combing at it frantically. Her exposed bony shoulders crackle and a fracture in her humerus seems to get noticeably larger. The flesh of her arms starts just below her elbows, covering her fingers, much like tall cobalt gloves.

Axel isn't even paying attention. He's instead toying with the numerous metal studs penetrating the better part of his ears. They click and clatter against his razor-sharp nails. "Mother's sent me down to pick up a pound of monkey brains and…if you have any about, Missus Plum, some of your lovely scorpions and larynx salad." The skin of his neck flaps as his words go by and he leans forward against the counter. He coyly moves a long fingernail in nonsense patterns along the countertop. He glances up at her with his brilliant verdigris eyes, still smiling widely, as if he's about to go for her throat.

She swoons, as expected, and reaches over to pat him on the shoulder. Her hand comes away sticky from one of the open wounds. She finds this deliciously scandalous and lovingly wipes the ooze off on her filthy apron.

"A'course," she trills, waddling toward the back on broken hips to shout shrilly for Mr. Plum to get a pound of 'monk-eh br-ins' ready for 'dear, Axel'. She looks back at him and tries to replicate the maneuver of flickering eyelashes but they're stiff and brittle and stuck to her skin. She hasn't so much as blinked in years.

Axel waggles his thin fire-red eyebrows at her indecently and the giggle she emits is more like a bullfrog croak. She thinks he's terribly charming, and the way he does that…Oh, she feels like a freshly buried corpse again!

The snakes nestled amongst Axel's crimson hair snicker to each other and, in his mind, Axel tells them to _be quiet_.

Mrs. Plum remembers that the young monster had also asked for some of her infamous scorpion and larynx salad. She would love to stay and endure his flirtations further, but instead she stumps off to her kitchen to prepare.

When she returns, she hands both orders to him, shivering with delight as his sharp fingernails prick her bloodless flesh. As he tries to pay her, she holds up hands of violent arrest.

"No, no, deary, you just give your m'ther m' regards, go on now b'for y'get caught inna squall."

Axel flashes his great shiny teeth again, waves, and considers blowing a kiss to her, but finds that too revolting, even for him.

The way home takes substantially less time than the way there.

So's the temporal space of Halloween Town.

The rain calms and, when he passes through the Town Square, he catches sight of Missus Sally walking around with a trundling baby carriage made of bones and pig hides and decorated with silver spider webs. He waves at her, admiring her lovely stitching, and she offers him a prim smile.

He and his family live on the edge of town, close to where the subterranean caverns open up. Their home is nothing too special, built of stone, very tall and with a pronounced list to the right. A lengthy flight of rickety stairs encircles the whole of the building, leading to the roof where his grandfather keeps an aerie of ravens. There are nearly forty floors in total. The first floor contains the kitchen and the commons, and then as one goes up, each floor thereafter is a family member's room. They have a very large extended family, all of which are an important part of the traditional business.

Axel has to put all of his considerable strength into forcing the heavy oaken front door open. It screams at him in furious protest, the horse-head knocker swinging about wildly and trying to snap at him with iron teeth as its eyes roll madly in its head.

Immediately upon entering he sees his mother is gliding about in the kitchen, stirring a great cauldron of neon purple goop. He goes to her, offering up the items he'd been sent on errand to get. He does not bother to take off his large clunking boots. The carpet is worn thin by centuries of Monsters walking across it, clawing it, bleeding on it. Anyway, with the number of buckles and zippers on the shoes, it takes nearly an hour to remove them.

His mother is a thin creature made from bundles of sticks, much like a voodoo doll. She has a head carved from gray ashen wood, which is absolutely exquisite. She'd married into the family, and most of her sons look much more like their lumbering, terrifying, father.

She takes the monkey brains and salad, thanks him with a quirk of her engraved lips, and then resumes her cooking.

Those loitering around in the commons, which the kitchen looks directly out onto, greet Axel caustically.

Demyx is to the right side of the room, playing the organ beneath the staircase.

Zexion is studying the Necronomicon for his class.

Luxord is complaining to Xaldin about how Oogie Boogie has cheated him at dice, again.

Meanwhile, the local news chatters away in the background on the flickering television set.

Axel waves to them absentmindedly before heading up the groaning stairway to his room on the eighth floor. He thinks to brush his snakes and hair, feed his pet octopus, and then work on preparing for his Halloween Project.

Jack Skellington himself has given him the task…Axel intends to knock them dead.

* * *

**Standard Disclaimers  
**


	4. head

**Part Four**

"Roxas."

"Roxas?"

"Roxas!"

"Roxas..."

"…"

His family is watching him. There are exactly ten turquoise eyes, in varying degrees of intensity, every shade from the sky to the sea and then back again.

Naminé is sitting silently in their father's lap, her head lolling against his chest. She doesn't say a word, but hers is the only the only voice he hears.

They are all watching him.

Sora is asking him something. But his ears are ringing and he fails to hear.

His mother's mouth is moving. Her lips slowly morph into butterflies and fly away, leaving nothing but smooth skin in their wake.

He thinks, vaguely, to do fewer drugs.

He startles like a lyrebird when Kairi places her hand over his, squeezing with untamed gentleness.

Roxas_-sssssssss_.

Their voices hang on his name, hissing out: treacherous and sibilant. His hands are clammy and shaking. He jerks away from his sister's touch, casts a bloodshot, baleful, glance at Naminé and then flees, his mother's pleas on his heels.

His room is a dark little sanctuary full of scattered CDs, some of which are ruined with cracks like the spider webs adorning the corners of his room. His mother hasn't had the courage to break through the blockade in order to clean in years. There are shelves overflowing with books, their spines broken beyond repair and the life-blood pages spilling out helplessly from betwixt the covers. Posters peel from the walls, having ripped themselves free of tacks, attempting to escape the confinements of the Wall.

This room is full of monsters, Dracula, Frankenstein. Encyclopedias detailing various creatures related to the lycanthrope…He has found a kind of solace in fraudulent monsters. The sort that can never compare to the creature that haunts him in reality. Or maybe it's a sick fascination with that which has turned him into what he is.

He doesn't know, all he knows is this room is warm and the star-dotted blanket is the best thing to hide under.

There is silence all throughout the house for a long time, but finally his family continues on with their business. Roxas hears the screech of the front door opening, and then slamming raucously closed, several times, he imagines his parents are going to a party and that Sora is going to visit Riku. Kairi, at least, won't leave without saying a word.

When she appears in the doorway she has Naminé cradled in her arms like a tiny bundle of flowers.

"I thought." She begins to say something; a spiel that she's rationalized to herself. But, as the words dribble from her mouth, she knows it's all a lie. She's frightened of this monster, which torments her siblings, she's horrified and she thinks it's too late for Roxas, but Naminé can be saved yet. "I thought you might enjoy some time alone…and that Naminé might like to come to Selphie's. With me."

Roxas peeks out from beneath his old safety blanket. He smiles tiredly at Naminé.

"That's a good idea," he mumbles. His voice is so disused that Kairi can barely hear him at all. "He can't show up in someone else's house."

The rings around the little girl's eyes make them seem almost bulging. She looks at her companion-in-terror and trusts him. She snuggles against Kairi's chest, sitting limply in her sister's arms without saying a word.

Kairi perceives Roxas' horror-driven room to be far too macabre—just as he intends—and loathes spending any amount of time inside of it—just as he intends. She exits with Naminé shortly thereafter and the house falls prey to silence in their wake.

It is very unexpected, startling, painful, when Roxas begins to feel a sort of loneliness settling onto him. Ever since Naminé's visitations from the creature had begun, he had spent most of his time with her: just the two of them sitting together and drawing strength from one another. Now that she's gone, he feels weak and alone.

He thinks to stave off this unwelcome surge of emotion by immersing himself in her room. He takes the blanket along with him, wrapped around his shoulders like a cloak. It drags along the floor in time with his bare feet slapping across the wooden boards.

He lifts his skirts to avoid shuffling Naminé's scattered drawings and then collapses into her soft bed. It smells enough like her and the sheets are soft enough to entice him to _sleep_.

Roxas awakens again immediately. Or he thinks immediately, in truth he's slept for nearly an hour, but it's still been long enough for night to settle comfortably in. It's the longest time he's spent sleeping since he was six years old.

In the dark, his baby sister's room seems much less inviting, the air is too open and he once again longs for his own sanctuary. He listens for movement in the house, hears none, and then sets his feet lightly on the ground, warm blanket still wrapped around gaunt shoulders.

Naminé's drawings rustle and his heart leaps into his throat from panic, he rushes for the door, only to trip over the very thing which comforts him. He falls uselessly to the floor, slamming down onto hard wood with a burst of warm blood as he bites his tongue.

He's dazed for a long, palpitating, moment before he registers the frigid ring around his ankle. No one is there to see his ashen face become a noticeably paler shade of white. His eyes widen to nearly the size of saucers, their blue sparkle dull with abject terror. He refuses to twist his body and see what has caught hold of him.

When he begins to slide against his own volition towards the shadowy realm of 'beneath the bed' he makes an animal like bleating sound, giving several flailing kicks. His foot is released and he scrabbles away on his haunches, his legs too shaky to get him upright, and his hands in much the same state.

All he can do is huddle against the door and stare back at the pair of glowing green eyes watching him.

The monster slithers, just as he remembers. The stitching in its face is pulled taut due to its massive, glittering grin: full of scalpel-sharp teeth. Its long obsidian claws are reaching, cleaving through the air in their path for him. Fiery hair burns and crackles loudly with a chorus of mismatched snakes.

The thing is seeping out of the shadows, more and more of its horrific body exposed in the thin layer of moonlight that seems to have died upon the air. The ragged tatter-like clothes that the thing wears, thankfully, to cover parts of its rotting body, look more blood stained than he remembers. Irrelevancies such as these are so much easier to navigate through the mind once it has been emptied in a horror.

Roxas gives another soft bleat as the beast looms over him, inspecting him in a sinister silence that feels very much akin to immolation.

"You aren't the girl."

The words that issue from that thing's wounded throat are deep and growled, there's a strange cant to his speech which Roxas imagines, with all the force of his irrelevancies, must come from the very long tongue that he knows is rolled up behind that wall of teeth. Then it registers to him that the monster under the bed has just spoken. Four years this creature tormented him at night and never before had he heard it utter a word.

"Oh god," Roxas croaks. Not because he believes in God. He has never been able to develop that particular weakness of the mind. He'd tried desperately when he was eight, thinking it might rid him of the beast who haunted him in the night. He says it now because there is nothing else he can possibly say. However, he's gripped with the frantic desire to switch on the lights with the desperate, pathetic, hope that it will make the monster go back into its den of shadows.

Suddenly the fire in the thing's hair extinguishes and its eyes wink out, as if two, albeit Unholy, stars have just died. The beast turns away to crawl back under the bed and the instant its back is to him, Roxas shoots upwards, flips the light switch and then collapses straight back to the floor, panting and suddenly aware that he is still bleeding from his mouth.

The snakes in the demon's hair give a set of rattles and snarls. One spits at him, but the deadly projectile falls short. The monster turns back as well, his eyes, sown as they are into their sockets, narrow angrily. However…it doesn't do anything.

Roxas expects it to. Expects it to lunge at him, to bite him, to kill him. Something. And the fact that it has yet to do any such thing is far more trying on his mind than anything else.

"You seem a bit old to still be afraid of the monster under the bed," the thing smiles. With all its many pointed teeth, the expression is more menacing than soothing, which Roxas sort of thinks isn't what it had intended. The monster is coming closer again, so Roxas shrinks back against the door, his baby-blue eyes very, very wide as they watch, surrounded by soot-like rings of physically manifested fatigue.

The blond tries to stutter out something, but instead ducks his head and closes his eyes, tightly.

Its nails card through his messy hair briefly. Then it makes a thoughtful sound…it's capable of thought? Well it is speaking and the irrelevancies run rampant in Roxas' head, he can't make them stop and their incessant voices are making him feel more insane than usual. He jerks his head up, hitting on the door with a thud, and the monster actually laughs at him. The sound of it whistles through the gaping holes in its neck.

"You're kind of strange for a flesh bag." It reaches out again, this time to catch a droplet of blood dribbling from Roxas' chin, after it has spilled forth from his mouth.

Roxas' lips part in surprise and, before he knows it, he's saying something, despite his stinging tongue.

"Stop coming here." It sounds weak and pathetic and he expects the thing to laugh at him again.

It doesn't, however. It cocks one of its eyebrows; they're red, like its hair; and sharp and delicate.

"This isn't your room, what does it matter to you?" It lets loose its tongue, the long purple thing trailing well past its collarbones. Each forked tip flicks about a little, taunting Roxas with abandon.

"I…" Roxas falters, closes his eyes and swallows against the vomit that rises in his throat at the memory of that tongue on his cheek. "I can _hear_ it."

The snakes strike up for emphasis and he moans pitifully, covering his ears.

For some reason the monster makes its serpents stop. When Roxas glances up, curious to see if perhaps it'd left, he's met with frightening eyes watching him.

"You smell like you're really, deathly, frightened," it says, eyes narrowing in thought. Its feet, encased in strange boots, shift around a bit with a jingle of buckles and the crunch of paper. Roxas can only guess at what's going through its mind, and he doesn't really _want_ to, not at all.

He just waits, his eyes darting around, just in case some new route of escape has suddenly opened up, other than the door at his back. He's a bit relieved that Naminé isn't here to suffer with him, and he debates regaling this event to her later.

He's brought back to his current crisis by the creature's crypt-like voice.

"How about this, fleshy," it hisses derisively. "I leave you and the little girl alone, but I get to study you until Halloween."  
Roxas doesn't know what it means by study, but the offer has its appeals. He debates swiftly in his mind, factoring in that he may never get a chance again. He can spare Naminé the scars he bears. If the visits stop now she'll slowly forget and think it all nothing more than so many bad dreams.

"I don't understand."

"It's simple," the thing murmurs smartly. "I won't come actively terrorizing either of you in the night. But you…you're so delightfully scared of me! You're my greatest achievement! Guh! I want to study you in preparation for Halloween."

Roxas does not claim to understand and neither has he ever claimed to be selfless, yet in this treaty he sees a glimmer of hope.

"And." He loses his voice somewhere in his throat, a combination of terror-stricken and dry. He coughs weakly and it rattles unpleasantly in his chest. "And after that? After Halloween? Never again?"

Roxas likes to think he's handled this well, considering he's facing down his nightmares.

"Never again," it agrees.

Only with a great bolstering of his courage does Roxas manage to agree…Partly for Naminé's sake, mostly for his own. He will either conquer his fears or do away with their source.

Whichever comes first?

* * *

**Standard Disclaimers  
**


	5. like so

**Part Five **

Axel slinks into his bed just as the sun is beginning to set in a spray of putrid green and pallid grays. He takes with him into slumber images of dull, lifeless eyes, sunken in and smudged as if with black coal. Moonfall-hued barbed wire for hair…Pale skin, hidden away from the violent face of the sun for so long, draped over nothing more than bone. Skeletal; Zombie-like.

His nightmares are pleasant and his anticipation for the next day—the next mortal night—when he will return to burden that fleshy little human's mind, is overwhelming.

He is ecstatic.

א

Roxas lies in Naminé's bed, shaking vulnerably, for the rest of the night. Far too frightened to set his feet upon the floor.

He hears it as the life breaths back into the house. Sora's shouting; his parents' drunken laughter; the squealing scream of the storm door when Kairi and Naminé return. Their liveliness flows, like the wine his parents invariably drink, and when his little sister comes into her room, her eyes are bright after a full night of sleep. She has flourished so much just from a few hours away from the monster with its snakes and spiders and teeth.

"Roxas?"

"You'll never see him again, Naminé. I promise."

The silence is a heavy echo falling in on him like a torrent of leaves; crackle and static on a TV with mute.

א

The hours leading up until nightfall are tense and charged with energy.

Roxas lies curled up in his room, body twitching and convulsing from an imbalance of chemicals.

Axel paces the sloping, creaking, floor of his room, occasionally pausing to check the time on his pocket watch.

Roxas waits in his room, full of trepidation and the quietly maddening fear that has been a part of his life for so long he doesn't really remember how not to be afraid any longer. He watches the sun set in horror.

When at last it's time…

He dives through the earth with a gleeful wail.

He curls up in his bed and concentrates on holding in his tears.

He finds the door to the girl's room.

He gets up and slinks into the relative safety of the closet and smokes a fat blunt, which drools kine buds upon the floor.

He hides in the shadows and makes his way through the hall, following the boy's sweet scent of smoke and perspiration.

He whimpers helplessly as the door creaks open.

The umbras hiss.

The monster sits on its haunches before him, head cocked, as if regarding.

"Hello."

Roxas gives a tiny whine, like a kicked puppy.

"We haven't been properly introduced, have we?"

Roxas buries his head in his arms and shivers.

"My name is Axel."

Roxas looks up at him with trepidation, just to find long claws extended out towards him in something sickeningly akin to a handshake. He does not take it, only shies back into the corner and mumbles his own name in reply.

Axel sneers at him and moves around the room, looking and laughing at the posters and the humans in suites.

Laughter, no matter whom it comes from, is always laughter and the sound does something to help relieve the oppressively terrifying air of the room.

"So, tell me, Roxas," the beast snickers, spit flying off his lips in frothing mirth. "What is it about me that you find the most frightening?"

The blond boy—nearly a man by human terms—curled up in the closet, begins to answer, however, Axel continues on.

"I mean, I realize you humans have held a deep seeded fear of the dark…what for the way it represents ignorance and you've been manipulated so many times by false lights that just led you in even deeper…I mean, really, if you study the Dark Ages…Plagues and Catholicism and…I get that. Damn, the Inquisition! But that doesn't really seem enough. Is it the snakes? My brother did a paper on that, how you humans are ingrained with a loathing for snakes because of Adam and Eve. It was a very compelling paper, Zexion is terrific at debating, but I just don't buy the theory. Is it that I'm mostly dead? I know you flesh-bags stumbled through a time period where you went to great lengths to make sure you were never buried alive and you have all these myths about zombies and immortals. Or are you one of those superstitious livelies? The sort that thinks I'm here to collect your eternal soul and drag it down to Hell? You know, I've met a few demons, and that really isn't what they're up to. There's this one human named Eckhart and Eckhart saw Hell and he got it, unlike the rest of you. He said: The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you, he said. They're freeing your soul. So, if you're frightened of dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth.

"Well, do you want to know what my personal opinion is? On why you humans are so scared of us, I mean? I think it all boils down to uncertainty and arrogance. You humans like to think that you're on the ball; that you know everything there is to know about the world, even the things that haven't been discovered yet. And then we pop up out of nowhere and you can't explain us! And you fear what you can't explain because it challenges that, so far, undisputed title of 'top dog'. It's all about your egos and how you can't stand to be wrong, can't freaking believe it when you're caught with your pants down! But…man, my brother Lexaeus thinks it's all about how selfish you are. That you fear only out of purely selfish reasons, worrying about your own peace of mind and of body. And I mean, Hells Bells! From there I can't even decide whether this is a good trait or a bad trait for you beasts! Whether it makes you weak or if it's what has kept you buggers alive for so long! By all rights and reason you should be extinct. But you're like cockroaches!"

That leaves Roxas with no choice but the _think_ about it. To take in each well-formed word as if he is listening to a speech, in a proper audience hall, with a normal man, in a dry-cleaned suit behind a cardboard podium and…All of Axel's points make sense, yet at the same time, Roxas knows, viscerally, that it all feels wrong.

"You're scary."

Simplicity is the best his quietly muddled mind can manage. Axel shifts and moves like a serpent, more so than Roxas recalls, the slink of his figure is positively graceful.

Possibly the vision is a side effect of the grass, but Roxas feels his buzz has been killed many times over by the jolts of fear, which shoot through him every-single-time Axel takes a step closer to him.

The monster seems displeased by his answer, wants more, wants to hear Roxas give an entire thesis on the subject of his own fear and,

"That's it?"

"Y-yes."

"What if I gave you more time to think about it?"

"I…"

Roxas thinks that's an amazing idea; if it will make Axel go away.

א

Axel comes back the next night.

And the next.

And the next.

Roxas whimpers the next night.

And the next.

And the next.

Halloween draws nearer.

Axel takes notes.

Roxas considers, carefully.

_Why am I afraid?_

His finding are…inconclusive.

א

"So, what do you do during the day?" Axel inquires one evening a few death tolls before midnight.

Roxas has long since foregone the closet and sits on his comfortable bed. Nonetheless, keeping Axel situated at the far end of the room.

"I go to school, but I won't for much longer."

He's grown somewhat used to Axel's smiles and his laughter. So, when Axel gives a dark grating caw, in his head, it automatically equates to something very much akin to a giggle.

"I haven't been to school in years. What do you learn?" The monster wriggles closer, slithering up onto the bed beside him. Roxas cringes away, but somehow manages to cope with the creature's proximity. It's a dangerous exercise in control and restraint; the beast truly smells of corpses.

"Stuff. Like…math and stuff…"

"And stuff? We learned about chemical composition and psychology and mythology and…"

He blathers on into the night, dark tongue flicking along razor-thin blue lips and menacing rows of teeth.

א

It's October.

Halloween is only twenty-five days away. The air is cold, caressing skin with hair-raising affection. The sky becomes a crisp and startlingly slate as the moisture fades, taking the clouds as their prisoners. The trees dance and rustle dryly as they make their yearly blood sacrifices to the ground. The corn drains of green and the hot scents of preservative spices fill the air, even in suburbia.

Each morning on his way to school, Roxas sees more and more decorations, paltry and uninspiring in the face of what he knows to be true.

Nylon ghosts, blow-up zombies, and cardboard creepies.

א

It's October.

Halloween is only twenty days away. The Town is bustling and Axel is shaking with anticipation. They all are, the mayor, Jack, the witches, the clowns, the zombies, and the swamp-things. They're starving for the sound of screams and the feel of hysteria struggling in the air. They long for the dark, stolid sky of All Hollow's Eve and the malicious glint from the stars. The subtle shift of the shadow and the dust, the snap of ordinary emotions into unbridled terror.

His findings with Roxas have been nonexistent.

Though, he has returned each night, all the same.

א

It's October.

Halloween is only ten days away.

* * *

**Standard Disclaimers**


	6. much

**Part Six**

The night Axel comes and finds the boy fast asleep is the night he realizes it is already too late.

The strain is painfully perceptible.

For a time, he watches the little boy's chest rise and fall, traces the jagged, senseless lines of his bed-mussed hair with eyes yet undecayed.

Then the creature turns to give retreat from the room—Roxas' sanctuary from the nightmares; his altar to the bete-noire; his asylum of phobias.

Axel only manages to barely take one step. He does not even have time to begin preparing himself and then the pain shoots through him, extinguishing his inner flame until he's left cold and gasping like a fish out of water. He is clawing at the air, while formless shades quiver in uncomprehending fear, sniveling at the black soles of his boots.

The cruel malignant fingers of _true_ death wriggles up through his bowels, strangling him with his own frigid intestines, breaking his last reserves of skin and bone, allowing him one horrible reminder of what it is like to suffocate, to freeze.

He's gonna to die.

He is going to die.

He's coughing up foaming, beautiful, vert, virulent bile and the creaking wooden floors devour it hungrily with their nasty, gnashing, splinters and nails for teeth.

The quiet, dove-like coo is all that saves him.

The girl, Roxas has told him her name a million times, but Axel can't remember anything beyond the unholy pain coursing through his body.

The girl's eyes widen.

Her perfect, sinking, Prussian blue eyes.

She gasps wordlessly, tiny white feet dancing beneath her, urging her body away, self-preservation at it's purest.

Axel coughs and laughs.

And knows it is all for her.

"I have to go," he croaks harshly.

He knows, he realizes now, that showing intelligence makes them less afraid. He had never thought about it before Roxas, never bothered to speak to any of his assignments until Roxas and his gaunt body and lifeless eyes.

It's his own fault.

He must get past the girl, must get beneath the bed and return to Halloween Town.

He finds the strength to lift himself up as the ache abates.

The girl cowers before him, her knees knocking and her tiny pearly teeth chattering inside her skull.

"I have to go."

Somehow he gets past her, hurries through her benign white room and disappears into the dust beneath her bed.

א

Naminé says nothing of the brief encounter to her brother.

Concerned, she peaks into his bedroom and crawls up onto the coverlet bed beside him, looks at his face, how peaceful he is in sleep and…

It does not take much for her to begin comprehending the changes that have taken place. Her heart swells on her brother's behalf.

א

When his dreams fail to send him careening back to consciousness on a stream of screams, he is bewildered.

א

Axel forces himself to return.

Claws, desperately, futilely through the caverns, often pausing to lay panting, tired and defeating, in the warm earthy tunnel ways.

The wormlings and maggots crawl all over his body, the moles and spiders watch him curiously, wondering if he will expire, if he will taste good.

The snakes hiss with fear and fury, biting at Axel's face, trying to force him up, but his skeletal ribcage continues to heave for breath, trying to drag what he hasn't needed for a very long time out of the air.

Somehow, at last, he finds a reserve of strength and shoots forward, out, away, immerging into the gloom of the little girl's room.

He has kept his promise, or tried to, and he has not bothered her. Not once. He can only come into the human world, in this particular house, through her room, and usually he slips into the hallway to Roxas' room without any sort of qualm. However, tonight he is far too weak to meld with the shadows.

He stumbles clumsily, papers shuffling under his feet, his boots thudding against the floor. He can feel her eyes burning into his back, but he doesn't look at her. He continues on as best he can and closes the door behind himself with all the quiet he can muster.

Roxas is waiting for him just one room over. With his tremors and wide icy eyes and deathly pale skin. Roxas with his spiking, glittering hair looking like so many gold-plated knives. Roxas and his soft rabid hallucinations and deep smoky smell.

"I'm sorry."

Roxas is close, very close. Roxas has come to him, is standing right before him, and Axel knows it's too late. He stares down; his stitching feels loose, as if his jaw is about to fall off at any second. His limbs seem weighted down, his threads seeming to be tugged there as well. The wounds he had long since forgotten about begin to ache as if freshly inflicted.

Roxas has apologized for something; Axel doesn't think he has time to accept and to explain and to console and to pity; Roxas as well as himself.

"I was asleep, I'm sorry. Did you come last night?"

The shadows raise up to swathe him and he reaches out to steady himself against the wall.

"Axel?"

His asps and adders and rattlers and corals are quiet and lifeless around his head. His ears are drooping…the flame inside of him is dying again. It hurts. It hurts so badly.

"Axel! Why are you…"

He begins to feel insubstantial.

"Why are you disappearing?"

The air goes tight and a little bit of life, like a sip of water in the desert. It flows back into the monster and he stares down at the creature that is the source of all his torture.

"You know, your fear of losing me…is only going to hold it off for so long."

Roxas looks back at him, their eyes meet and the boy doesn't flinch for the first time in a long while. He's close enough to touch, and Axel does, running cold fingers along warm skin.

He has the awful idea that he can take Roxas' blood. Bite him again, leave more scars like the one he sees peaking out wistfully from beneath the boy's clothing.

He hates himself a little bit for having the thoughts. Blood tastes wonderful, no monster can deny it, but it holds no nutritional value, does nothing to fill their gullets. At least not human blood, it's a condition of their raison d'etre and their symbiosis.

"I don't understand." Roxas understands perfectly, but the concept causes him the same pain that Axel is suffering. He won't admit to comprehending of his own right.

"Don't make me spell it out, Roxas."

The name grates through the tegument of his neck. It hurts, it burns, and then it itches. He scratches and dark blood congeals immediately on his nails.

"I don't understand, Axel," the boy replies, childlike and helpless. It makes the situation that much more pressing.

"You aren't afraid anymore and I've promised not to act against your sister. I can't stay here if no one is afraid, do you have that memorized, Roxas!?"

It isn't right to get angry with the boy.

It doesn't help to be angry with himself.

The sharp way Roxas looks elsewhere is…comforting in a way, which makes Axel think maybe he hasn't destroyed everything. He has never disliked his lot in life before. He has never wished he hadn't scared a child, but that is maybe because the good ones grew stronger from his haunting and he never has to see the bad ones once they grow up.

"You're disappearing again," the blond whispers, the words hanging low on his vocal words, stretched tight like rubber bands.

"I can't…come back."

"It isn't fair."

"It doesn't _matter_. I _can't_ come back."

His jowls move, but no sound emits. His form has become ethereal, when he reaches out to Roxas, his hand is like mist, which disperses at the human's touch and then reforms.

"Axel," Roxas says, begging and hurting, but there is nothing either of them can do. Roxas never imagined he would conquer his fear, not this way; he does not want it this way.

Desperate, foolish, and naïve, he attempts to cling to the cloud of dark thoughts and vanquished fears, which once comprised Axel's form in this plane. Roxas' arms pass through the mass, but then he is enveloped by it.

He is struck blind as the veil of night swaddles his eyes and he feels the panic welling up in his chest. It's comfortingly familiar to feel his heart tap-dancing erratically in his throat.

"Axel?" he whispers, hands searching frantically through the air

His vision begins to return just as his fingers catch on Axel's sweater and a gust of violently cold wind hits him like a freight train.

"Oh, Roxas," it sounds so pitiable, but Roxas' sight is still so blurry he doesn't…

"What?"

"_What_?" Axel repeats, his voice growing sharp and hoarse and it's so very, very, cold. Roxas begins to shiver. "Roxas, what have you done. Do you even _know_ what you've done?"

There is an endless, soundless, moment in which he is not breathing.

"I…"

Axel grasps his arm like an iron maiden and drags him bodily towards the slanting faces and jagged rooftops of, what is beginning to come into focus as, a city. There are strange smells and strange sounds floating wraith-like upon the frosty air. The cobbles shift, unsteady in their mortar, beneath his bare feet.

The building Axel stops in front of is covered entirely with spider webs. Roxas thinks, hysterically, of the little house covered in vines in which Madeline once lived.

"Look!" Axel demands, pushing him roughly towards a window. It too looks like so many webs, what with its dark and glistening cracks. Refracting a deranged image back to the boy in a million different horrifying ways.

"Oh, God."

He is dead.

His body has shrunk, leaving him more emaciated and skeletal than before. His clothing hangs off him; is eating him; he's positively swimming in seas of fraying fabric which had once fit so well. His hair…it looks strange, and when he shakes his head, his whole body vibrating from terror's resonance, several feathers disengage themselves and float past him face. One of his eyes has been clouded over with milky white, like a spider's egg sac—in fact, something wriggles noticeably beneath the veneer. His other eye burns with fierce indigo foxfire. His canines look sharp and feral in the dusty windowpane.

His skin is peeling off his body. As the panic pulls him in, his skin bristles—_turns to quills _like a porcupine_—_and sticks up at strange, stiff, angles and his eyes stretch, long and oval and vaguely like a that of a great hissing cat. His whole body, panic, he's panicking, he's starting to panic, and his whole body feels tight and stretching and suddenly spikes, like bones, are protruding from the backs of his shoulders. He can feel the dangerous sharpness of all his teeth now. His fingernails are dark and bruised and his fingers are long and sharp and, now that his vision has returned, he looks away. That's all he can do and… 

He looks instead to Axel and gives a weak overwrought laugh.

"I can't take you back." The monster says before he can even ask.

So, Roxas swallows thickly around his confusion. Swallows past his revulsion with his own body. Swallows past his weak attachments to what he'd had.

And finds…

"How do I look?"

Axel's face is priceless. "What?"

"How do I look?"

…he doesn't much mind.

"_Terrible_."

"Good."

* * *

_End_

* * *

**Standard Disclaimers**


	7. meat

_Epilogue, the_

"So...want to go meet the family...?" Axel wonders uncertainly.

Roxas' blade ridden smile chills him. "I'm terrified."

At least then Axel knows it's love. 


End file.
